* 5:46 pm - The Tribune and Sun-Times have interviewed Sen. Barack Obama today about his ties to Tony Rezko.

* Raw audio is here. Or, if that doesn’t work, you can download it from my site by clicking here.

* The Tribune has posted a few soundbytes at this page.

* The Trib’s story is here.

* The Sun-Times story is here

* Sun-Times raw audio is here

The Trib story is pretty light (usual Trib practice of way too much background and not enough “news”) so listen to the audio.

* Also, Obama has penned a piece addressing the “controversy” over his pastor. Read it here.

*** Rush Transcript/Summation of Parts of Tribune Audio ***

* 6:05 pm - I’m listening to the Tribune audio, and here is what I have so far…

Obama told the Tribune that the lot next to the house already had an option on it when he first looked at it. He said that his realtor told him at the time that the house was proving difficult to sell. His broker said the house was overpriced, so he wanted to get an estimate of the value. Rezko was an “active developer” in that particular part of town so Obama and his wife decided Obama would approach Rezko and ask him to take a look.

Rezko, Obama said, at that point discovered that the person who had the option of the lot was a former employee of Rezko’s. Rezko asked Obama why he wasn’t interested in buying the lot. Obama said it wasn’t worth it to us to spend an extra $600K or so on that lot. Rezko said he might be interested in purchasing it. Obama said his response was “that would be fine.” Obama said he should have said that Rezko’s purchase wasn’t a good idea.

After getting it inspected, Obama offered, through his broker, $1.3 million. The sellers came back with a counter offer of somewhere between $1.75 and 1.8. The lot was never mentioned in the negotiations. And they ended up at $1.65 mil. “This notion that I got a discount and that Rezko overpaid… is simply not true.”

* 6:15 pm - On why he would involve himself with Rezko when it was obvious that he was so hot, Obama said, “At least with respect to the purchase of the house, he wasn’t involved with the purchase of my house.” And Rezko wasn’t widely known to be in big trouble at that time.

However, the strip of land purchase from Rezko, Obama said, was a bigger lapse in judgement because Rezko was known to be in hot water and was also a campaign contributor.

* 6:17 pm - Asked why he has no records about how much Rezko raised for his state Senate campaign fund, Obama said: “I don’t have internal records on who might have been a contributor who Tony Rezko encouraged to contribute.”

Obama said he only kept records which were required to be compiled by state campaign disclsoure laws.

* 6:22 pm - Obama said the brand new Blagojevich administration asked him and others to send in names for state jobs back in 2003. “We sent a list of people, but it was not a list of people who I was particularly close to. If I’m not mistaken it included people who came into the office asking for jobs, or this or that or the other.”

The only time he had any involvement with Rezko on this topic, Obama said, was on behalf of Dr. Eric Whitacre, the eventual director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. “I don’t remember whether I called Tony or he called me,” and said Whitacre was outstanding and should get an interview. Rezko was one of the people screening administration posts, which is why he talked to Rezko.

* 6:30 pm - After being pressed on whether it might seem to others like Obama and Rezko coordinated the purchase of the lot and the house, Obama said: “How can we coordinate with someone if I’m negotiating with the seller and they have already sold the option on that lot…?”

* 6:33 pm - Obama said that one problem he’s had getting all the facts together and the story out to reporters is that the sellers are “not interested in being drawn into a media circus.”

According to Obama, one reporter obtained the number of the sellers’ 11 year-old daughter’s cell phone number, called it and asked to speak with her parents. Others showed up at their house, and one got through security at Johns Hopkins, where they work.

* 6:35 pm - Obama said that he and his wife actually thought a new house built next to them might be a good thing because it would block traffic noise from a busy street that borders the currently empty lot.

* 6:50 - More on Rezko: “He did not ask me for favors… He was not obtrusive. He wasn’t one of those people who would insist on coming around all the time or being photographed with me constantly. You didn’t get a sense that there were a whole host of motives or agendas there…. And so it felt like a very comfortable friendship.”

And asked whether Rezko introduced him to a lot of people, Obama said: “He was helpful to me, as I said, early in my career. Not so much introducing, but reinforcing relationships with aldermen and people on the South Side, mainly because of his development work. In terms of his fundraising, frankly, I think that most of the people that he raised money from were business associates or friends of his who I did not end up getting, establishing deep relationships with. I mean there were people who might have come to a fundraiser with him, he would introduce me I would say hello, make some small talk.

“I can’t think of anybody who’s been a lasting supporter of mine who was introduced to me through him.”

* 6:53 pm - Obama said he didn’t know Rezko’s wife had actually purchased the lot until the Tribune broke the story.

* 7:11 pm - On Geraldine Ferraro’s comments and his controversial pastor, Rev. Wright: “I don’t think what [Ferraro] said was racist…. I think what she said was wrong. The notion was that I was an affirmative action beneficiary… It was looking at an issue through a racial lens that doesn’t make perfect sense.”

“Reverend Wright… preached his last sermon… This is someone I’ve known for 20 years… He’s a former Marine, a biblical scholar… He hasn’t been my political adviser he’s been my pastor. I have to say the clips that have been shown over the last couple of days are deeply disturbing to me. I wasn’t in church during those sermons. the things he said and the way he said them I think are offensive. And I reject them, and they don’t reflect who I am and what I believe in.”

* 7:36 pm - This is the last update on the Tribune audio. The Sun-Times should be posting audio soon. This is more about the connection between what Ferraro said and what Wright said.

“I do think there’s an overlap (between Ferraro and Wright) in the sense that.. there is a generational shift that is taking place and is constantly taking place in our society.

“And Rev. Wright is somebody who came of age in the 60s, and so like a lot of African-American men of fierce intelligence coming up in the 60s he has a lot of the language and the memories and the baggage of those times. I represent a different generation with just a different set of life experiences, and so see race relations in different terms than he does…

“This is where the connection comes in. I do think that Geraldine Ferraro, the lense through which she looks at race, is different. She’s 70 years old. She’s grown up in different times. The Queens that she grew up is, I’m sure, a different place than it was then…

“So part of my job is to see if I can help push the country into a different place with a different set of understandings.

“That doesn’t excuse what reverend said. I am very troubled by it. As I said if I had heard those sermons, if I had been there when those sermons were taking place, I would have raised that with him. And if I had thought that that was the message that was being promoted on a consistent basis in that church I don’t think I could be consistently a part of it.”

*** Rush Transcript/Summation of Parts of Sun-Times Audio ***

* 8:40 pm - Obama told the Sun-Times that neither he nor his campaign fund had been served with subpoenas, and had not been interviewed by Rezko’s defense team.

Question: FBI mole John Thomas said he saw you go into Rezko’s office “a lot” and three other sources said you spoke on the phone with Rezko daily. Is that true? Answer: “No.”

“There would be stretches of like a couple of weeks, for example prior to him organizing the fundraiser that he did for us. where I would probably be talking to him once a day to make sure that was going well.”

* 8:51 pm - On the Rezko dealings, Obama said, “This was a mistake on my part… It is further evidence that I’m not perfect. But I would put it in the context of somebody who has been in politics now for eleven or twelve years and other than this has had a blemishless record in a political context where it’s easy to get blemished.”

* 9:15 pm - Sun-Times question: Would you have been able to buy the house if Rezko hadn’t stepped forward at that time to buy the lot?

Answer: “Yes. Absolutely. The transaction with the sellers had to do with the house. They confirm it here… The house purchase was negotiated between ourselves and the seller, it was not contingent on the lot. The lot had nothing to do with the sale of the house and the sellers confirm that. And that took place in negotiations between our broker and the seller’s broker.”

Question: They said [the house] had to close the same day as the [lot closed]

Answer: “I understand, but they already had an option [on the lot]”

Question: So, how did Rezko jump ahead of the guy with the option?

Answer: “That I don’t know.”

Question: You, your wife, attorney, realtor never related to the seller that you would have preferred that the lot was sold to Rezko?

Answer: “Never had that conversation.”

Question: So you would have closed either way on the house?

Answer: “Either way we were purchasing the house if we agreed on the contract which we did.”

* 9:40 pm - Question: Springfield since you left has been in a state of utter gridlock… What is your advice to them and who do you think is to blame for this mess?

Answer: “I won’t blame anybody. I think everybody’s responsible. I think that the people of Illinois are not being well served right now and are disappointed with the inaction, the gridlock, the rancor that has taken place down there. And I don’t think it makes Democrats look good. We are in charge of every branch of government, we should be able to solve problems. And so my advice would be to leave the egos at the door and actually start to deal with the issues that the people sent them to deal with.”